4 ms·

When has humans meddling in ecologies ever worked fine without huge negative side effects?

• cm2012 7y ago
  Off the top of my head: Eliminating hookworm in the USA. Bringing wolves back to Yellowstone.
  • Tiktaalik 7y ago
    We can probably strike wolves off the list since it's a restorative act. In Yellowstone's natural state prior to human intervention it had wolves were part of the ecology. The general way meddling in ecologies goes is that humans remove or add something and the entire ecology becomes grossly distorted. (Eg. Driving Sea Otters to near extinction creates a bloom of Sea Urchins, which devastate ocean habitat of so many other species etc etc)
    • diggernet 7y ago
      Excellent point. Let us also strike eradicating invasive species from the list for being a restorative act. And then proceed with eliminating the Aedes mosquito from most of the places it is now found.
• namdnay 7y ago
  Eradicating smallpox?
  • coldtea 7y ago
    Well, let's not celebrate our success on the war just after a battle was won, let's wait for the next battles first. We could have just made things worst and more threatening... https://www.reactgroup.org/antibiotic-resistance/the-threat/ https://www.reactgroup.org/antibiotic-resistance/the-threat/ https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/
  • wetpaws 7y ago
    Also polio.
    • RobAtticus 7y ago
      We have not yet eradicated polio globally. This year has actually been a setback in number of cases: http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this-week/ http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this-week/
      • wetpaws 7y ago
        It's bad, but still 99% down from what we had in 80-s :)
• Symmetry 7y ago
  Well, sinking old scows offshore to make artificial reefs has worked out pretty well. Honestly most of the times that humans try to meddle in ecologies, as opposed to trying to do something else without thinking about ecologies at all, it tends to go all right? I can think of a few cases with huge negative effects and basically everything that anybody ever does will have some small negative effect but when people try to get it right it tends to go pretty ok.
• beautifulfreak 7y ago
  Cornell offers success stories: https://biocontrol.entomology.cornell.edu/success.php https://biocontrol.entomology.cornell.edu/success.php